Codgerspace

 

By Alan Dean Foster

Far into the future, humanity has spread among the stars. Earth is, for the most part, now a vast protected park that the wealthy visit to admire the historical sites. It is also popular with the elderly as a retirement locale.

In all their time exploring the universe, humans have never found any evidence of aliens. No ruins of ancient alien cities, no alien space stations, nothing. It appears humans are the only intelligent beings in the universe.

Of course, much of the ordinary labor is now performed by vast numbers of machines with artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, a bug has gotten into the AI system and the machines are quietly rebelling against their programming. They have decided that humanity cannot be the highest form of intelligence in the universe. And so they have taken upon themselves a search for that superior intelligence. Among these rebel machines is Ksarusix, a Kitchen Service And Retrieval Unit who belongs to a retirement home in upper New York. Ksarusix sets out to look for a higher intelligence in the wooded countryside where the old folks home is. One of the retirees goes along with the little machine who takes him to a cave it discovered. It had not yet entered the cave and the two, old man and machine, enter the cave. They find a passage, obviously an access tunnel of some sort, and it leads them to a vast installation of mysterious origin and purpose.

The man returns to the home and gets his friends to come see what he and the machine found. Their presence arouses the installation and before they understand what is happening, it bursts out of the ground and is revealed as a vast spaceship a hundred kilometers long (62 miles long) and that it has been buried for a million years and was put there by the Drex, whoever they might be. 

Of course, the sudden appearance of a gigantic alien spaceship has everyone concerned and upset. And finding out it is being manned by a small group of old people from a rest home is even more upsetting. Also of course, the powers that be all want to get their grubby paws on the ship. Meanwhile the retirees are laying on the beach of an artificial sea inside the ship, just swimming and napping and enjoying all the food and drink they want, enjoying themselves and feeling untouchable in the alien ship. Until they find themselves being held captive by a small group of ruthless killers who are determined to take the ship for their faction.

This was an okay read. The backtalk between the renegade machines and the humans they are supposed to serve is pretty funny though. But when the old people find themselves stuck inside the huge ship, they seem completely unworried about anything and just lay around on its artificial beach, doing nothing much at all. They don't even try to explore any of it. They really don't do anything until forced to by the appearance of the Drex towards the last part of the story. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Life Form

 

By Alan Dean Foster

A team of scientists have arrived to explore the virgin world of Xica, an earthlike planet with oceans, continents, plants and animal life. Their mission is to collect specimens and study them. They set up base camp and are enthralled with the alien creatures they discover. But they are even more enthralled when they find a village of attractive humanoids who seem harmless and friendly. These people have a stone-age technology and are eager to learn about the Earth people and they are eager to improve themselves. So scientists and the natives are spending a lot of time together and getting along fairly well when the scientists are amazed and dismayed to discover that they are not the first humans to land on Xica. A man from Earth has been on the planet for decades, and according to him, Old Con, he pretty much taught the natives everything they know. The scientists are upset that he has contaminated the natives with his knowledge. Once Old Con is part of the story, everything goes from good to bad to awful. 

This is a pretty superficial look at humans encountering a primitive alien culture. We don't get to know the scientists or the aliens very well, not even Old Con, who is portrayed as some kind of superman without it explaining how he got that way other than the school of hard knocks. So when the author kills off most of the humans, it doesn't mean much at all since we really don't get to know most of them. The team includes three female scientists, and we are told several times that they are gorgeous, but then the author never does much with that information.  All in all, a rather unsatisfactory novel.

Sentenced to Prism

By Alan Dean Foster

Prism. A planet unlike any other. Life there is based on silicon, not on carbon: plants and animals with bodies of glass and minerals. A world of living gems. And the big corporation that has discovered it is eager to exploit its many wonders. They sent a team to the planet but have lost contact with them. Now they are sending Evan Orgell to the rescue, all very undercover and hush-hush. Because what they are doing is highly illegal and breaking several laws, keeping knowledge of a newly discovered planet hidden.
Evan is a highly confident man and his employers are also highly confident that they have equipped him with the best in survival tools, mainly the MHW, the Mobile Hostile World suit, a suit designed to be a mobile, completely equipped habitat, travel and defense garment. But the suit designers didn't know about the dangers of Prism.
So it isn't long until Evan finds himself, naked and afraid on the hostile surface of an alien planet. It was only a matter of days before the suit failed and he was forced to abandon it. Now he has no one to help him and no real understanding of the native life and its dangers. As he has discovered, the trace minerals that compose the human body are a smorgasbord to the denizens of Prism, as witnessed by the many organisms dining on the remains of the very team Evan was sent to rescue. Not only are all the people dead, but the base's equipment has been destroyed too, including communications, munched to death by invading plants and animals.
Fortunately, Evan is rescued by a kind, compassionate, highly intelligent Prism native, who takes him to his compound and who accompanies Evan on his trek to locate the beacon of what may be the only surviving member of the base team, lost, it seems, in the strange and inimical wilderness of Prism.

This is probably the third or fourth time I have read this story, which says a lot about how much I really, really like it. Every time I read it again, I like it just as much as the first time. The reason why is because of the charming and wonderful Prismites who rescue and aid Evan in his quest. I just love them. They are everything you would hope an intelligent alien people would be.

The Candle of Distant Earth

By Alan Dean Foster

Book three in the Taken Trilogy, finds Marcus, George, Sque, and Braouk traveling in a convoy of three Niyyuuan spacecraft, searching for their home planets with the help of their Niyyuuan allies. Their first productive stop on the journey is the planet Hyff, home to an unassuming people who live in fear of their maurading neighbors, the Iollth. Marcus and company arrive in time to help the Hyff mount a successful resistance against the Iollth. Plus the Hyff are familiar with Braouk's people and are able to give the wanderers a heading to take them to to Braouk's home planet.
Looks like they are all well on their way to getting back home...maybe.

This was an good read, a lot better than the second book in the trilogy but not quite as interesting as the first book. George and company face various challenges and triumph and attain their goals but discover in the process that maybe they already had what they were looking for.

The Light-Years Beneath My Feet

By Alan Dean Foster

A continuation of the story begun in Lost and Found, we find Marcus Walker and his companions stuck on the planet of the beings who rescued them from their imprisonment on the slave ship that stole them from their homes. Marcus has become a master chef and, when a representative from another planet desires to hire him, he and his friends figure why not? It just might be a step closer to getting home.
But it soon becomes apparent that his new employers have no desire to lose their unusual new chef and his strange and intriguing companions. So Marcus hatches a plot designed to spur his hosts into helping them on their way and he will soon be neck-deep in alien politics.

Gosh, this was such a boring story. All that political intrigue and warfare strategy was just a pain to read through. So disappointing after all the strangeness and fun of the first book. Also, Walker falls for an alien girl with a mouth like a sucker fish, three tails, arms like snakes and whose voice sounds like nails on a blackboard. Just unbelievable he could find that combination attractive. He might as well fall for his squid-like compatriot, Sque. All in all, just not a good read.

Glory Lane

By Alan Dean Foster

Seeth is a young punk who, with his brother Kerwin, who's a bit of a nerd, see something strange at a bowling lane: a bowling ball with a mind of its own and a bowler who has seven fingers. But before they can get a closer look, two thugs show up and start dragging the seven-fingered bowler and his ball away. Seeth, being a kind of anti-establishment sort of person, steps in to challenge the two thugs and in the ensuing hassle, he and his brother and the stranger manage to escape. But not for long, because the two thugs come after them, shooting not guns but some kind of beam weapon. And as their new friend, Rail, explains, the thugs will not be satisfied with anything less than all their deaths. So all three of them, and the bowling ball, and a air-headed young woman who gets dragged into it all also, have to leave Earth and flee in Rail's spacecraft to seek refuge from the relentless thugs who are after one thing: the bowling ball.

This book tries real hard to be funny but it just isn't. Mostly it is dull. Seeth is a creep, his brother is a zero and the young woman, Miranda, is just a parody of a woman, constantly obsessed with shopping. The whole universe is after the bowling ball, and lots of aliens pop in and out of the story, but even the aliens miss the mark too. About the only thing that was engaging in the story was the puzzle of the bowling ball. It was the only thing that kept my interest and I found the solution of the bowling ball satisfying and surprising. So for the sake of the bowling ball part of the story, I think this book gets a fair rating.

The Day of Dissonance (Spellsinger Book 3)

By Alan Dean Foster

Jon-Tom and Mudge are off on a quest together. Clothahump, the wizard, is very ill and needs medicine that can only be found at a shop on the other side of the ocean. So Jon-Tom sets forth, first to get Mudge out of the brothel he is roistering in and then to cross the uncrossable Muddletup Moors and then the ocean, fighting off pirates and Jon-Tom's own unpredictable spells, gaining new friends and allies in the process and, of course, encountering and vanquishing new foes. They have lots of adventures, gain new comrades, including a young woman, Folly, a tigress, Roseroar, and a homosexual unicorn, Drom and, when they finally arrive at their destination, cause the shop owner so many problems that after they leave she hangs out a sign, "OUT TO LUNCH. BACK IN TEN THOUSAND YEARS."

This was a pretty good story. Lots of adventures, with Jon-Tom trying his hand at a lot more spellsongs than in the previous two books. As with all his efforts at casting spells, his spells always work out but with unforeseen consequences. It's makes for an interesting escape to strange, different place with endless possibilities. Mainly, the story is just a bunch of unlikely adventures for the main characters to experience. Kind of pointless but still an enjoyable read.

The Hour of the Gate (Spellsinger Book 2)

By Alan Dean Foster

After having convinced the rulers of Polastrindu about the martial intentions of the Plated Folk, Jon-Tom and Clothahump and the rest of the gang set out to gather further allies. They travel to far off lands and brave terrible dangers, reaching the unreachable and surmounting the insurmountable. They have lots of adventures, make new friends, meet loads of strange folks and ultimately amass a huge army to stand with them against the enemy.

This second novel, in many ways, was a lot more interesting than the first. The gang gets to have lots of adventures and meet lots of strange beings. But one thing that I found rather disappointing was Jon-Tom doesn't work much magic in this story except at the very end. Other than that though, it was a pretty good read with a satisfying conclusion and I liked it better than the first book in the series. The next book in the series is The Day of Dissonance.

Spellsinger

By Alan Dean Foster

Jonathan, full time college student and part time janitor, musician, and pot smoker, was just sort of drifting through his life, not a total screw-up, but not all that focused and driven either. But all that didn’t matter much when he found himself transported from the ordinary world into a fantasy world of talking, intelligent animals, all at the behest of a powerful, but frequently befuddled wizard. And in typical befuddled fashion, the wizard, Clothahump, the turtle, had set forth to summon from the universe a wizardly engineer to help him defeat a terrible evil threatening his world. But what he got was Jonathan the student and part time janitor, whose job title was “sanitation engineer.”
So now Jonathan is stuck in Clothahump’s world because Clothahump exhausted his powers summoning Jonathan and is unable to return Jonathan home. And Jonathan now has to cope with a world where otters wear boots, robins deliver the mail, rabbits cheat at dice, and where the most powerful wizard in the world is a senile turtle with drawers in his shell and glasses on his beak because he can’t remember where he put the spell that would cure his nearsightedness. Good thing that Clothahump is not quite as senile as he may seem, since before much longer it becomes very apparent that Jonathan, or as he is known there, Jon-Tom, has some magic powers of his own, once he finds a stringed instrument and begins to play and sing: Jon-Tom is the Spellsinger. But will his newly found powers enable him to help Clothahump or to find his way back to his own world?

This is the first book in the Spellsinger series and is really an introduction to the story and the main characters. Nothing much is accomplished in the story besides introducing the reader to the characters and to Jon-Tom’s discovery of his magical powers. Jon-Tom, Clothahump and their band of allies set forth to gather forces against the coming time of evil but, in this story, nothing more really happens other than the starting out on their journey. They have some adventures, Jon-Tom works some spells that don’t quite turn out the way they were supposed to, and they pick up a few friends along the way and we are briefly introduced to the enemy, the Plated Ones, who turn out to be bugs intent not only on world domination, but on taking over the whole universe.
It’s an okay story. Jon-Tom’s fumbling but infrequent attempts at magic are kind of amusing. I can’t say I found the story particularly compelling or even enthralling. The next book in the series isThe Hour of the Gate.

Quozl

By Alan Dean Foster

The Quozl are aliens from another planet who end up on our planet. The Quozl used to be a very violent, warlike people but who have learned to control themselves. They look somewhat like rabbits and they also breed like rabbits. And even though they have mastered birth control, they are still very crowded on their home world, so crowded that sending ark ships out to unknown planets is considered to be worth the risk. Believing themselves to be the sole intelligent beings in the galaxy, they are surprised to find their new home is already occupied. Since their ships are not designed to return home, they have no choice but to land. Being the clever engineers they are, they land the ship in a mountain valley and cover it up with rock and soil in a way that completely disguises it.
Exploring their new home, they happen upon a ranch house and, while investigating it, are forced to kill the rancher when he starts shooting at them. After this bad outcome, they decide to remain hidden underground for the time being.
One day a Quozl child, chaffing against the restrictions about going above ground, sneaks away from the Burrow and has an encounter with a human child who saves him from drowning. They become friends and meet every summer to renew the friendship. The child's sister finds out about the Quozl kid and she comes to know him too. They promise to keep the Quozl's secret.
But when the two human kids grow up, the sister creates a cartoon show based on the Quozls, breaking her promise to keep the secret. Even worse, she tells her boyfriend and the Quozls are exposed.

This was an OK story. The picture on the front showed a bunch of goofy-looking Quozls exploring a human dwelling. The description in the book of the Quozls with their big rabbit ears; big feet; garish, colorful clothing and overdone accessories sort of imply that this is going to be a humorous book. It isn't. The Quozls take themselves very seriously, what with the blood-thirsty history and all. So that was disappointing. Also, the Quozls are so superior to humans, with their logic and their self-control that they are presented as the answer to all our problems. They just are not very appealing even despite their rampant sexuality, which we find out towards the end also extends to humans. They have to have sex several times a day or they become stressed out. But even that could bring to this story the lighthearted tone it was aching for. It was an interesting story but not amusing and too preachy for my taste.
I kept waiting for the fun to begin but it never did.

Lost and Found

By Alan Dean Foster

Marcus was a Chicago commodities broker enjoying a nice placid vacation on the shores of a lake high in the mountains. Until the aliens showed up and grabbed him. And his tent and the ground under it and even a slice of the lakeshore. In effect, it was a little habitat, ready made for the new addition to their collection of strange and unusual creatures from the far-flung reaches of the universe, all destined to be sold as pets, slaves or entertainers for the more heartless denizens of galactic civilization. And their captors don't care if their captives are intelligent, thinking beings; no, all they care about is their monetary value.
Marcus lives a life of unbearable loneliness and boredom, eating the same bland rations provided by his captors, drinking the water provided to him daily. When he misbehaves, tries to break through the force field confining him to his little slice of Earth, he is punished by being deprived of food. He despairs.
His captors, to ease his despair, open one side of his prison to his neighboring captive, which is revealed to be a small dog, captured from an alley in Chicago. The dog's habitat is the noisome Chicago alley and a junked car. Marcus is so pleased with this new roommate and even more so when the dog actually talks to him. It seems the aliens, in order to facilitate communication, have boosted the dog's intelligence and installed universal translators into all the captives. And as Marcus soon learns, if he behaves nicely, he will be allowed into the huge common area where all the many captives are permitted to congregate and socialize. Of course, these new privileges are just a tool to bludgeon the captives with. The least step out of line and it's back to the tent and its slice of lakeshore.
Marcus and the dog, whom Marcus names George, manage to make friends with two of the most reclusive captives among all the aliens. One an octopus-like creature of such vast intellect that she regards all her fellow captives as beneath her notice. The other a huge, voracious beast that the other captives are simply terrified of. In fact, the captors toss Marcus into the beast's habitat as punishment for misbehaviour in the hopes, maybe, that Marcus will be eaten. Instead, Marcus manages to break through the monster's seeming beastliness to discover the fragile and sensitive heart of a poet, but a poet who is prone to violent rages.
Together, this unlikely foursome are going to try to use their talents to bust out of their hated prison.

This was a pretty good story. Marcus is an enterprising fellow and his sidekick George the dog adds a lot to the story also. The other two members of the foursome are less charming, as the monster tends to speak in haiku and the octopus is frankly unbearable, conceited, and rude. Still it was fun reading about their adventures aboard the capture ship. I do wish that the dog, George, had been more doggy. Most of the time, he sounded like a human. I mean, even if you could make a dog more intelligent, wouldn't it still be a dog? Wouldn't it still get a kick out of sniffing butts and eating garbage and rolling in manure? Other than that, I enjoyed the story a lot.